For a jump back into Disney’s past, take a look at a photo album of a trip to Disneyland in 1968. There’s a photo of The Tomorrowland Skyway that I rode on in 1981 which has since closed. In fact, most of the rides pictured have been closed as Disney tries to keep up with our changing and always faulty impression of the future. (via Pop Culture Junkmail)

FreeHand Systems exhibited their MusicPad at MacWorld last week. Computer display technology is reaching a size and price point where an electronic music stand can become reality. FreeHand has received a patent on its music annotation technology and also a “half-page turn” lookahead feature. The San Diego Symphony tested the MusicPad and its footpedal page-turner at performances of the “Nutcracker” in 2001. One day the glow from the orchestra pit isn’t going to be from stand lights but back-lit LCDs. When networking gets integrated in as well, I can imagine conductors turning off any feature that shows where the current beat is. They’ll want us to look up as the beat is only a smidge of what they’re communicating. Either that or they’ll use a networked annotation to draw eyeglasses on everyone’s music at all the tempo changes. (Additional note, it appears that legal action was taken against FreeHand by another holder of electronic stand patents.)

Our local paper now has online browsing of their print ads. It seems useless at first; why would I browse the ads when I am annoyed enough by pop-ups and flashy ads getting in the way of my online reading? But when I do browse through these online ads, I am in the shopping and bargain hunting mindset and open to their solicitations. The ads are organized into categories so if I want to see what Fry’s is advertising this week, I just click a couple times instead of rummaging through stacks of newsprint looking for their ads. I can look for airfare specials and even find out where movies are playing. Not so useless after all.

Costco, warehouse-bulk-no-frills-shopping-off-the-pallet king, plans to test out a gourmet store and a home furnishings store, both in Washington state. According to The Seattle Times, Costco Fresh will “focus almost exclusively on grocery and associated services, with special attention to fresh produce, meats, seafood, and baked goods.” The home furnishings store, which opened in December displays merchandise in room settings, just like a regular furniture store. But unlike most furniture stores, you don’t have to wait weeks to months for your purchase to arrive as they stock 3,000 items ready for you to load into your oversized SUV. There are some custom orders though, and I’m betting they don’t have too many of the $40,000 Bosendorfer pianos sitting in the warehouse.

Want to cook like you’re back in colonial times (or earlier)? William Rubel has written a book called “The Magic of Fire” which describes how to prepare meals on an open hearth. Rubel burns a fire down to embers and braises vegetables, simmers spelt, roasts fish, and even steams a chocolate cake, all at his fireplace. A founder of the children’s magazine Stone Soup, Rubel will be at Chez Panisse for an open hearth dinner next week, and is also working with Deborah Madison, famous veggie cookbook author.

The brouhaha over Intuit’s TurboTax product activation (the Amazon customer reviews are scathing) reminded me of Lotus’ little debacle with copy protection, circa 1989. As described on this page about cracking 1-2-3’s copy protection, Lotus actually created a utility that would remove the copy protection from an installed version of 1-2-3 version 2.01. They shipped it in a “Value Pack” of helpful software. Unfortunately, users often ran into problems with the sometimes not-so-valuable Value Pack, rendering their spreadsheet software unloadable. Deluged with product support calls, Lotus hired a batch of college interns that summer to assist in taking calls from frantic users. That’s where I came in. Thanks to Lotus’ copy-protection scheme and faulty removal process, I got my foot in the computer industry door. Lesson learned: never skimp on quality assurance, even if you think you’re doing customers a service.

A less common support call related to copy protection: a customer calling to say that they bought a copy of Lotus 1-2-3, in “original” shrinkwrap, but it had someone else’s name already on the disk. That’s when I learned that Egghead stores would shrinkwrap returned software and put it back on the shelf like it was new. Lesson learned: Fry’s Electronic’s restocking sticker (aka The White Sticker of Death) actually demonstrates some level of good customer service.

Viewer Mail

Jennifer sent a cute article about a kitten who survived a six-story fall and was rescued by a radio reporter. The grateful owners repaid the vet expenses and sent the reporter flowers. The kitten is undergoing physical therapy.

Lynn sent a followup on the self-tuning piano I mentioned recently. This paper is written by the inventor of that piano and describes the problems and solutions from his quest.

Vote for the California State Quarter design. No no, not that one, pick that one! (thanks Lisa!)

And lastly, Tony wrote in to say that traffic roundabouts are not good for bicyclists. Here’s what he had to say:

In the Nederlands far more people commuter by bicycle than go
by car. So ALL roundabouts in the Nederlands, many thousands of them,
were replaced by traffic signals about 15 or 20 years ago. Naturally,
there is no right turn on red in the Nederlands—indeed many traffic
signals there have a separate phase for bicyclists whose presence is
detected by induction loops buried in the road.

I did some specific web searching on this topic and found a Florida report (in PDF) that states that although car and pedestrian accidents are reduced at roundabout intersections, bicycle accidents increase. Not good. I also found a U.S. DOT research paper on roundabout safety which does mention the issue of bicycle safety on this page. It reports that the Netherlands have been very successful in their roundabout use, but does mention the high accident rate of one of the designs used there. “Mini-roundabouts” have reduced bicycle injuries in the Netherlands, but not in Britain. Looking at the actual source material cited by the study would shed better light on this issue. But bicycle safety is definitely a concern for roundabout usage.

Thanks for the mail everyone!

Back for another round of publicity: the SoloTrek XFV: Exoskeleton Flying Vehicle, prototype going on sale at eBay on Friday. But the winner must promise never to fly it. Shucks.

MediaNews brings us “the difference between NPR and PRI,” a conundrum which was certainly keeping me awake at stop lights. Peter Sagal sends in a small rebuttal in the Letters section.

Martha Martha Martha…Stewart, of course. Her new food magazine got some news coverage on the same day that DaimlerChrysler announced they were not renewing their Martha Stewart ad dollars but putting them towards Celene Dion instead. Also yesterday, UMass Magazine ran an item on a PhD candidate in communications whose dissertation is all about the Martha phenomenon, specifically audience reactions. There’s contact information if you’d like to participate.